


going, going, gone

by mutterandmumble



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Canon Compliant, Diners, Established Relationship, Explicit Language, F/M, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Post-Canon, Road Trips, Spoilers, Storms, for end of trk, of being in a restaurant after midnight, that really weird feeling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:27:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27414247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mutterandmumble/pseuds/mutterandmumble
Summary: In which there’s a bad magazine, it rains and rains and rains, and Henry, Blue, and Gansey inflict themselves upon the worldOr: how to get kicked out of a Denny’s, in three easy steps
Relationships: Henry Cheng/Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent
Comments: 2
Kudos: 32





	going, going, gone

**Author's Note:**

> Ok so this was supposed to take place in a Waffle House because I’ve been to Waffle House at two/three in the morning several times and I’ve been to Denny’s like three times in my life overall and all of those were years ago, but then I remembered those cups that they had where you could like put two drinks into them at once and then I had to google Denny’s merch for like ten minutes to find them at which point I figured I may as well set this fic in Denny’s, to commemorate 
> 
> And so: sarchengsy dennys fic.

They pull off on exit fifteen on a whim, one that starts with Henry though it spreads so quickly and completely to Blue and Gansey that it could have come from any one of them or none of them at all or else manifested itself right on the dashboard and they all would’ve taken to it in much the same way. It’s two in the morning too, and Gansey’s driving and Gansey thinks that if Blue or Henry so much as smiled at him the right way (or any way at all) he would do just about anything, including- but not limited to- petty theft, serving as a distraction by making a large scene in a small restaurant, and getting an almost decent amount of sleep for once, so when Henry says that he’s hungry and then mentions with all the subtlety of a freight train that there’s a few places they could stop off the next exit, Gansey’s halfway to swerving down the road before he’s even finished talking.

Now it  _ is  _ two in the morning and it  _ is  _ raining and Gansey  _ is  _ seventeen years old so a few of the turns they make from there are of dubious legality, and Blue hits the back of his seat once (she’d lost the passenger's seat that night to a coin toss and then proclaimed that the back was better anyways, because if they weren’t stopping tonight then at least  _ she  _ would be able to get some sleep, not like the two of  _ them  _ stuck up in the front seat  _ all alone- _ ) to tell him that he  _ woke her up with his shitty driving-  _ which, fair- but they make it all in one piece and now they’re all piling out in the parking lot of a Denny’s, and Gansey’s zoning out a bit because he’s been sitting for five hours straight and sort of forgot how standing is supposed to feel as Blue squints up at the clouds and Henry tries desperately to cover his head with a magazine that one of them picked up in a gas station a few states back. 

“My  _ hair _ ,” he says mournfully. The cover of his magazine heralds THE END OF THE WORLD in hot-pink bubble letters, right beneath the promise of a quiz on page 27 that will tell you if she’s really _ that _ into you. “All this rain is terrible for my  _ hair.  _ Do you know how hard I work on my hair? Day in, day out, the minute that I roll out of bed I’m off to the mirror and I’ve got my bottle of gel and a comb and then it’s just me and the will of god all alone together in that bathroom at some unholy hour of the morning- if you  _ knew _ the sort of effort it takes, it’d make your hair stand on end.”

“No puns before seven,” Blue tells him, tearing her gaze away from the swirl and flutter of the storm to glare at him in that way that she does where her mouth ticks up at the corner and her brows draw low over her eyes and she manages to look so unimpressed that it loops back around into being fond. “And we  _ all _ know how long you spend on your hair. We share a bathroom most of the time, Henry.”

“And what a tragedy that is,” Henry sighs, shaking his head. Blue snags his makeshift umbrella in retaliation and Henry stumbles over his feet trying to get it back and snaps a hand out to grab Gansey’s sleeve to keep himself from falling and then someone steps in a puddle and the droplets from that puddle splash over Gansey’s glasses and there’s a great big  _ boom  _ of thunder from overhead, and Gansey says, “Ah. Okay.” 

A fork of lightning cuts its way across the clouds in a strip of yellow-blue. The sky goes bright like the flash of a bulb, sharp and curled around the treetops, and the rain starts coming down hard enough to soak through his shirt and somewhere high above it all the Denny’s sign looks down on them, impassive in its height and the impromptu death of the letter E which leaves it reading Dnny’s. It’s classy as fuck and Gansey would love a picture with it, but as it is the elements seem intent on tearing him in two and while Gansey is a little unsure that he’s actually be  _ able  _ to die, (like for  _ good,  _ for  _ real _ ) at this point, he’d rather not find out, especially not in front of a Denny’s at two in the morning while on a roadtrip with his boyfriend and girlfriend, thank you. That’s an experiment for another day, preferably years and years in the future after he’s lived a good long life alongside all the people that he loves. 

“Perhaps we should go inside,” he suggests as the rain ticks from  _ downpour  _ into  _ torrent  _ and a gust of wind blows a swirl of leaves directly into his face. Henry’s hand is still twisted in his sleeve, his knuckles pressed into the skin of his shoulder, and Blue has the magazine pressed close to her, chest heaving with the exertion of keeping it out of Henry’s reach. They’re all drenched. There’s a man who actually made it inside the Denny’s like he was supposed to a good long while ago- and can you  _ imagine,  _ completing tasks just as you set out to, no detours or whims or  _ anything _ \- and now is staring at them through the window from his warm, dry spot in a booth with enough judgement to knock a person flat on their back. Or maybe that’s the wind again, which is really getting a little concerning at this point; either way they really should get moving, so Gansey starts on forwards and because Henry is still attached at his hip Henry follows, and then Blue darts in front of them both because  _ nobody  _ leaves Blue Sargent behind and with that they push through the doors and into the restaurant, the wind and rain and storm lingering somewhere far behind them like an afterthought. 

Inside, the Denny’s looks like a Denny’s, which is to say that it’s lit warmly in reddish-brown, there’s merchandise of questionable origin and quality lining the walls, the carpeting wears thin in several places, and it somehow manages to feel completely empty even though there’s people dotted throughout several of the booths. The three of them are dripping water everywhere, and Gansey isn’t entirely sure that Henry can actually remove his hand from where it’s still twisted in Gansey’s sleeve, but the hostess barely blinks at them (Gansey imagines that she’s seen much worse) and thirty seconds later they’re situated in a booth in the back corner, far away from anyone else though that isn’t too difficult with the restaurant being as quiet as it is at the moment. Blue puts down the magazine to pick up a menu and immediately Henry is disentangling himself from Gansey and snatching it up, moving so fast that it’s like the strike of a snake, a blur and then a shout of indignation from Blue and a half-lunge across the table that ends with a menu on the floor and Henry victorious, magazine still in hand as Blue sits back with a huff. 

“There’s not even any rain in here,” she says petulantly. “And that magazine kinda looks like trash anyways and not even in the way that like, a gossip magazine looks like trash, but more like a shitty high school english project or something. What do you even do with something like that?  _ Read  _ it?”

“Yep,” Henry tells her, ruffling the pages of the magazine and ignoring the way that the unnecessary gesture- anything for the  _ drama, _ of course, Gansey can respect that as one does not go on a years-long quest for a dead Welsh king without developing a certain level of flair- splatters rainwater all over their table before flipping it to a random page and leaning in close. “Ah, look. A think piece on technology in regards to modern art.” 

“See? There’s nothing about any of that on the cover. What the _fuck_ is that magazine even supposed to be about?” Blue grumbles, prodding at her menu and when it doesn’t move or bite or jump up and start dancing, (Gansey doesn’t know what she was looking to do), she picks it up. As she does, Henry flips to another page and turns the magazine around to show her, snapping it straight between his hands so that the gloss of the paper catches on the sort of yellow, sort of red light from the Denny’s-brand lighting. 

“Makeup tips,” he says, and Blue inhales so sharply and quickly that Gansey worries she’s going to choke. Between the puffy winter coat that she picked up from god knows where and the little metal spikes she glued to the collar of her shirt in their last hotel room, she looks like a very angry, very spiky, very pretty cactus. 

And because it’s late and his filter is shot to hell and back on a good day, Gansey says: “You look like a cactus.”

It’s a compliment. Cacti are hardy plants and cool-looking ones at that, and sometimes Gansey likes stopping in stores to wonder at the tiny cacti in the glazed pots and terrariums though he’s never dared to go as far as to actually  _ get  _ one because from what he can figure if he so much as looks at a plant it dies, but regardless as far as plants go cacti are among the best; they have interesting water retention systems, a built-in defense mechanism, many aesthetic qualities, and some of them have tiny flowers. 

It’s a compliment. Blue does not see it as a compliment. Blue kicks his shin underneath the table, and it isn’t hard enough to actually  _ hurt,  _ but at the same time-

Ow. 

“Oh, careful with that. We need him in one piece,” Henry says blandly as he thumbs to a different page of his magazine, this one a set of pictures and then a thick column of text that looks to be a knitting pattern for a set of dishcloths. “I’m not driving, and Blue, darling, baby, light of my life, I love you but I also love living to see tomorrow, and that is never a given when you’re behind the wheel.”

Blue kicks  _ him _ this time. She does not hold back, and Gansey would wince in sympathy, but well, he’s gotta preserve his energy if he’s going to be  _ driving _ so it seems as though Henry will have to fend for himself on that front. That said, when Gansey finds himself actually, fully  _ present _ in a conversation for once, especially in a conversation with people that he loves, there’s that pressing need to say whatever pops into his head before it has the chance to slip off into the great unknown that exists as a big, shapeless void in the back of his brain and is where all the dead things are laid to semi-unrest, like the location of his keys or that bit of scratch paper he used to keep track of his various passwords for increasingly obscure research sites or whatever words it was that he was planning on saying next. He can also feel a spat brewing that’s as charged and choppy as the storm outside (which is howling at the windows, spitting rainwater down to the asphalt and cracking lightning over the sky every three minutes on the minute, like clockwork), and while Gansey loves some good-natured banter as much as the next twice-revived, ambiguously magical monarch, he also doesn’t want his menu to become a casualty of their little war before he's had a chance to peruse the soft drink selection. 

“We could always just stay here,” he finds himself offering, as a compromise of course and _not_ just to be contrary because that would be childish and he is _not_ childish. “Live forever in the Denny’s. We can compose a catalogue of the various stains based on color, supposed substance, and how likely they would be to get this place shut down if a health inspector made a surprise visit. We could see the walk-in freezer. It’s supposed to be very nice this time of year, and that would be a good place to start our search for our starter home, though we can always shop around a bit first too, think it through before we settle on whether we’d like to put a deposit down on the cabinets beneath the sink or the bit of carpet in the corner over there that hasn’t been worn to shreds.”

Neither of them are particularly impressed with this. Well no one can say that he doesn’t try. 

“As fun as that sounds, and as much as I’d like to add some actual  _ color  _ to this place, holy  _ shit _ , we can’t live here. You’d get bored after an hour,” Blue says. “Once they got rid of those cup things that you could put two drinks in at once they took all the magic out of Denny’s _.  _ There aren’t any weird magical artifacts here anymore, just drunk college students, theater kids, and tired people. No ley lines, no weird dream forests, no Welsh kings,  _ nothing _ .”

She punctuates her statement with a decisive nod, a cross of her arms on the table and then a lean forwards for good measure. One of her earrings is made up of long, silvery loops that nearly brush against her shoulders, and because Gansey hasn’t really  _ slept  _ in the past forty-eight hours he finds himself watching in detached fascination as it swings back and forth and back and forth. Henry and Blue carry on their conversation regardless, because between the sleep deprivation and the semi-constant absentmindedness and then the hair-trigger attention span, they've gotten used to Gansey dropping in and out of conversations as he pleases. Adam told him once that having a conversation with him was like having every conversation you’ve ever had with him all at once; he might jump from topic to topic without so much as a breath in between, or else reference something someone said two weeks ago and then in the same breath forget his plans for tomorrow’s lunch.

“Those are all on the secret menu,” he distantly registers Henry saying. “You’ve gotta ask first.”

“And you would know?” Blue shoots back, prodding Henry’s arm and by extension Gansey, who is sitting very close to Henry because he is very warm and very nice to sit close to. Gansey is also hopelessly in love with him, but when it comes to Gansey that tends to be a bit of a given. 

“Yeah,” Henry says. “I read about it in an article.”

“Really? Where?” Blue asks, scrunching up her nose, and Gansey’s world snaps back into focus as he sees in a sort of slow, drawn-out moment of horror exactly how this is going to play out, from cradle to the grave that Blue is about to put the both of them in, wait  _ fuck- _

“Right here,” Henry tells her, brandishing the magazine. “Page 26.”

There is a moment where everything is perfectly still, and he’d say it’s like the calm before the storm but that feels disrespectful to say when the storm outside is trying so hard to wipe them all off the face of the earth. Like a snapshot then, or a painting painted by someone with a deeply ironic sense of humor; there’s the brown upholstery of the booth washed red-orange by the light, the man in the booth across from them with his hat and his hair and his mouth caught mid-yawn, the notch in the wall that has become  _ very  _ interesting all of a sudden, and then Blue’s face, which has twisted into a push-pull of rage and disbelief and looks right on the edge of splitting in two from the sheer weight of it all.

_ Damn,  _ Gansey thinks mournfully. Then he starts rifling through ways to convince the manager  _ not  _ to kick them out of the Denny’s at two in the morning when  _ out  _ is currently looking like a rather immersive aquarium experience and he had his heart set on an all-american patty melt, 15% off at select locations through July 25, order yours today. 

The moment is over in a moment (as moments tend to be) and then things start happening very quickly, like someone sat on the remote and got everything stuck on fast-forward. Blue lets out a squeak of rage that’s high-pitched and long-lived, trilled at the end and accompanied by just the right amount of indignation to knock a lesser man dead, and then she throws herself across the table, fingers just barely managing to brush the cover of the magazine before Henry’s jumping up and out of his seat in what would have been an impressive backbend, had their half of the booth not been built in front of a  _ wall _ . 

Henry yelps. Blue yells. Gansey makes a sound that’s something like a kettle and something like the squeal of a deflating balloon and entirely like someone mourning the loss of their all-american patty melt and the ten second rush that they would have gotten from that 15% percent discount. And so they go, carrying on the fastest comedy of errors that the world has ever seen: Blue is  _ on  _ the table now and Henry half underneath it, laughing so hard that his face has gone red, and then man in the booth with the hat and the hair the mouth caught mid-yawn looks downright  _ scandalized _ \- it’s like he’s never seen a group of magical teenagers fighting over a shitty magazine at a Denny's at two in the morning- and then all hell breaks loose but  _ all hell _ is one of those lights that hangs down from the ceiling and  _ breaks loose  _ is an unfortunately literal interpretation of events (Gansey has no patience for metaphor after midnight; it’s a curse, as it were) because at some point someone hit their head against said light and now it’s tilting and wobbling and swaying and, and,  _ and _ -

Fuck!

Alright. Okay. So they’ve definitely caught the attention of the manager by now. Gansey watches them approach from his spot among the wreckage and takes a deep breath in, squares his shoulders and readies his talking points one by one. They are not going to get kicked out of the Denny’s, not today, not on his watch; they’d have to kill him first. They are not going to get kicked out of the Denny’s. They are not going to get kicked out of the Denny’s. 

The manager arrives, looking angrier than any one person that Gansey’s ever seen, hands on their hips and hair twisted back behind their head in a severe bun. Gansey puts in the best smile that he’s got, the winning one that’s gotten him out of more trouble than he cares to remember and then  _ two _ significant others on top of that, and then he does the thing with his hands and his hair and his spine where he looks one part confident and two parts apologetic and three parts  _ completely  _ innocent, he’s never done anything wrong in his life, oh no, oh no, not  _ him _ , and then he launches into what’s sure to be his greatest exploit of all, the best excuse anyone’s given for anything  _ ever. _

They get kicked out of the Denny’s. 

But well, Gansey thinks as they stand beneath the awning and Henry methodically rips out pages of the magazine for them to use as makeshift umbrellas, there’s no one else he’d rather he be kicked out of restaurants at two in the morning with, no one else at all. 

**Author's Note:**

> Please consider leaving a comment if you enjoyed!! I love hearing from you guys!!


End file.
